THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON COMPRESSED MUSIC

[tmtomh]

Yes, Young's anger is based on a deeply flawed understanding of the digital medium, not to mention his position is filled with contradictions since most of the negative things he says about digital, if true, cannot be remedied simply with higher-res recording and a Pono player.

 

However, I do feel he touches on one important point, which I would be inclined to call a truth even though it is not a quantitative, easily measurable truth: I do think that production trends and techniques are influenced by what the dominant the medium and format is at the time, and that this influence includes both the technical qualities of the medium/format and also engineers' and producers' perceptions or believe about those media/formats, even if those perceptions and beliefs are wrong.

 

So just as the sound of '60s and early '70s rock was in large measure the sound the mics and mixing desks of the time - and also the sound of mixes and compression applied for an AM-radio audience, I do think that Young is correct that the wide availability of compressed digital formats, file sharing, and DAWs, has been a factor in the rise not only of excessive peak-limiting and digital compression, but also in the well-documented decrease in complexity of both lyrics and melodic/chord variety in popular music in the last decade or two.

 

Of course I don't think Young is correct that engineers used compression to louden soft passages because mp3 only provides "5%" of the musical content. But I do think he is correct in that compressed digital music has contributed to a technical and artistic cultural trend that is not a good one. Along with that, I do think there's a decent chance that, had his Pono ecosystem succeeded, it would've given dynamics more prominence in the mainstream cultural landscape around music and might have helped push back against the Loudness Wars.

 

Of course, if that happened we'd still have to contend with an overpriced Pono player, BS claims about it sounding better than iPods, and the annoyingly slow, leaky filters Young seems to prefer.